Here I am at one of our local communities, not far from our town of Kokwo Toto, where we have a clean water solar well that we put in in 2010, which is yielding 10,000 liters of water per day…music to our ears and life to our community…this is in Siria, where there is no water and little schooling available. Because there is no clean water in this area, the school teacher is scarcely found and school may take place maybe two days out of the week. These children travelled miles to come and see us here today. They waited patiently and quietly to have their eyes dilated!

This little baby had a bacterial infection due to lack of clean water. I lavaged her eyes with saline and sent her mother home with anti-bacterial drops to use for a week or so.

First, I thought this little child had brought some pineapple juice to school. Guess what it was…the only water source in the area yields this murky water, rife with virus and bacteria.

The children and the community come daily to the three water taps that provide the artesian water from our solar well to get the much needed basic need for life.

There are two tanks, one on the ground and this one which is just about 40 feet high to create the pressure needed to disseminate this liquid gold.

This picture is representative of the five schools that we visited. Each child received a pair of sunglasses, ophthalmic pair of glasses if needed, a T-shirt, notebook, crayons, pencils and coloring paper. The most important thing to them was the T-shirt. They loved it!

Thank you to our sponsors who helped us build the clinic years ago!

Dr Peter Campanella, Dr Moiz Carim, The Danellie Foundation, the Shade Tree Foundation, the Philadelphia County Optometric Society, the Frist Presybterian Church of Willow Grove, Wind Pham, Shonela Jalaluddin, Wanda Weber, Stacie Mills, Leah Clark, and those who repaired the life giving well: ACTED and John Brynan